Returning to the City

After pondering for quite some time, Valentine finally made his decision. Approaching the two objects the size of a small ball lying conspicuously on the cave floor. One of them was brown in color and was completely round while the other one was black and looked like it was melting.

"They must have been left here by the maker of this belt... probably,"

He reached out his right hand and was about to pick up the object on the right: the black melting one. It was the one that would allow Purloin to store a total of four abilities while slightly reducing their cost.

Looking at the object on the left, he muttered, "Hmm... I wonder..."

At exactly the same time, Valentine picked up the brown and black balls from the cave floor. They both felt heavy despite their size, and their surface was extremely smooth and cold to touch.

Crack!

Just a second later, the black ball cracked and quickly turned into ashes. The ashes then blew away from Valentine's hand despite there being no wind inside the cave. The black ball, on the other hand, remained intact.

"That's curious. It appears that they know of my intention..."

Valentine stuffed the heavy black ball inside his pocket and gave the dead-end one more thorough look in case he had missed anything. Besides the two balls, there seemed to be nothing else, so he left quickly, heading back towards the entrance of the cave.

The mural didn't show any abnormality on his way back, so he didn't pay any more attention to it. It might have some significance, but right now, Valentine had no way of knowing what it was since his ability had failed. He could only rely on Graham and his Fire Divination to check.

Once outside, he continued walking along the clear river while occasionally drank the water to quench his thirst. It took him quite a long time, probably more than two hours, to finally see a sign of a city being nearby. The river kept on going downstream, following the now wide valley with rock walls on both sides. Above the valley, there was a modern-looking bridge connecting the two sides. Whenever there was a bridge, usually there would be a way up and down the gap below for a lot of different reasons.

Just as he had expected, below the bridge, there was a ladder going all the way up. The metal ladder looked well maintained, without any signs of rust nor damage, although it was dirty, probably because of not being used recently.

"*Gulp!* Ah... this is refreshing!"

He drank the water from the river one last time before having to say goodbye to it.

Since his leg had healed quite a lot, Valentine could climb the ladder relatively easily. The cane would be an obstacle if he had to carry it while trying to hold onto the ladder, so he just used it as a hook, replacing his left hand. The cane handle was perfectly shaped for the job, after all, and the fact that it was almost indestructible meant Valentine didn't have to worry about it breaking midway.

"We're finally here, G!" There was genuine relief in his tone, as well as joy.

After climbing up the ladder for more than five minutes, Valentine finally reached the top, finding himself by the side of the street. There were fences leading from the ladder all the way to the sidewalk, which was protected by guard rails to prevent people from accidentally falling off the cliff.

With a wave of his hand, he stopped a public motor carriage and asked the driver to take him back to the hotel. According to the driver, he was currently on the north side of Rotsstraat, and since The Hotel was quite far away, he had to pay fifteen pennings for the ride. Valentine didn't have any problem with it, so the driver started driving right away.

Rotsstraat was a very busy street. It was quite similar to Grotemarktstraat in Sloten, in which a lot of people were flocking the street filled with restaurants, stores, and other establishments. It was also supposed to be close to Hoogland, where the rich lived, so the place attracted many different kinds of people.

Valentine reached the hotel after driving past different streets that he didn't know the name of. Apparently, at that hour the roads were busy, so the driver had to take a lot of unconventional roads to avoid traffic. After paying, Valentine entered the hotel and went straight away to his room. After writing something in his notebook and leaving it on the table, he lied down on the bed, sleeping the rest of the day to let the negative effect of the cane affecting both him and Graham wear off.

At seven in the evening, Graham Hymes woke up. He was finally free from the cane's negative effect. He quickly got changed into a simple shirt and cotton pants and sat at the table where he found his notebook lying around. There was a note from Valentine.

'G, the whole time you were unconscious, I found these things. First, there is a cave at the bottom of the valley near Hoogland, which can be accessed from the bridge north of Rotsstraat. Inside the cave, there is this mural that I've drawn in this notebook. Please use your divination to find out about it since my Reveal didn't work,'

Graham looked at the copy of the mural drawn on the left page and raised his eyebrow. It looked like wall arts that people would usually draw on walls in the city. It was not something he would have expected to find inside a cave. Judging from the color details that Valentine had also written, it seemed that the mural was old enough to allow the paint to fade. He then continued reading the note.

'Besides the mural, I also found two objects that can be used to upgrade Purloin. However, as soon as I decided on which one to take, the other got destroyed. It's the black ball that is inside the pocket of my jacket. We need Cadhla's help to use it in an upgrade.'

'Once you wake up, you should use divination to find out about the mural. Something is telling me that it's hiding a secret, G. Also, we need to find out about the woman attacking us earlier if possible,'

With guidance from Valentine's drawing, Graham began his divination attempt right away. He lit a fire with his lighter and tried to imagine the mural that was drawn on the cave wall. After he got the image in his mind, he began asking a question.

'What is this mural?'

The flame suddenly burned very brightly, making even the lighter hotter. Gradually, an image appeared and showed the mural that was exactly the same as the one Valentine had seen. However, it was not drawn on a cave wall, but rather, on the wall of a building. After that, the image disappeared.

"So it was indeed a wall art. But why is it inside a cave? Just how old is that thing?"

Graham returned to his divination and asked his next question.

'How old is this mural in the cave?'

An image slowly appeared in the flame. However, the image didn't come alone; it was accompanied by a raging flame and a painful headache that suddenly struck Graham. Trying his best to maintain his concentration, he carefully looked at the image.

It showed him the same mural again on the wall of a building. It then zoomed out and showed a very modern city with sky-reaching buildings everywhere. After that, the image abruptly shifted to that of a scene where people with strange fashion styles were dying one by one. After that, the image went completely red before it finally showed the mural inside the cave.

"Argh!!"

Suddenly, Graham felt a thunderclap headache that broke his concentration. It felt like he had been smitten by someone or something, and he fell down on the floor in pain, hands holding his head tight. His divination had ended violently and the lighter fell on his notebook, burning the copy of the mural that Valentine had drawn.

The smell of burning entered his nose, and noticing what was happening, Graham got up with difficulty and quickly used his Fire Manipulation to put out the fire. Unfortunately, the drawing of the mural had all been burned, although the note left by Valentine was strangely still safe, as well as everything else in the notebook. It was as if the drawing was the only target.

Pant... Pant...

"What do you think it was, Val?" his voice was still pained and his face red. The blood veins were still bulging on his forehead.

He sat on the chair and tried to recover as quickly as he could.

"The city that we saw, it doesn't look like it's in the Republic. Or anywhere in the world, really. I've never seen or heard of buildings reaching the sky like what we saw. And the people were wearing strange clothes. It was like we were looking at another world altogether, but the mural surely couldn't have come from another world, could it?" he leaned back on the chair leisurely while massaging his forehead.

"And the people dying and the red we saw. I have no idea what those mean. But one thing we know for sure is that it's not something we should know, seeing as something just interfered with my divination. Maybe once we get stronger..."

"Anyway, Val, based on my recent performances, I have a feeling that with just one more target, I will be able to please the Deity of Cunningness and Transformation. It's just a President rank Deity and we already have to go through so much trouble to please Him. I don't want to start thinking about the higher-ranked ones. No wonder those Contractbounds are so rare... Not to mention the fact that their messengers are taking their sweet time to tell us what They want."

Graham picked up his lighter that luckily was still intact. With a flick of his finger, he lit another fire and concentrated on it.

'Who is the woman with a weird fashion sense that attacked us earlier?'

Suddenly, Graham had a grieve sense of danger, so he quickly used Fire Manipulation to contain the flame.

Kaboom!

The flame exploded!

Luckily, he was fast enough to mitigate the damage. The explosion only affected the table and nothing else outside the explosion radius, leaving just a burnt patch on the table-- nothing that a little scrubbing couldn't clean. Unfortunately, the lighter was basically part of the explosion, so it couldn't be saved.

"I swear one day I will be able to do divination on whoever and whatever I want!" he mumbled in frustration and anger.

He had instinctively taken a step back and fallen off his chair as a result. Although he was not damaged by the explosion, his back still hurt from falling. Graham got up and retrieved his favorite lighter that was now damaged.

Sigh...

"After losing our gun, now my favorite lighter is broken..." his voice sounded really heartbroken.

Sitting on the chair face down, Graham was looking at the broken lighter on his palms.

"I swear I'll take revenge on that woman, Val,"

He then set the broken lighter aside, putting it inside the suitcase. He then took out another, much cheaper lighter whose design was plain and boring. It was clear that the lighter was the one very commonly found in convenience stores everywhere.

"It seems that she didn't place anti-divination, but instead, a curse. Something like that had happened before, and if I'm not mistaken, it should be the ability of a Demise who knows a lot about divination. Since she used mirrors to monitor us, we could conclude that she is a Thief, a Demise, and an Astrologer at least."

Graham started rubbing his chin.

"However, Val, we know that Paars also used mirrors for monitoring back in the morgue, and he is both an Astrologer and an Unseen. I think that's the more likely combination to get mirror divination ability. That means that woman is an Unseen and an Astrologer, and the divination curse ability should be something she got from her Marquis rank Deity, or from enhanced equipment. I think it's the latter since the power of the curse just now was something that I still could handle. If it was a Marquis rank ability, the effect would have been much greater,"

Graham's eyes lit up.

"Do you know what it means, Val? If we successfully take revenge on that woman, we'll be able to get our gun back, as well as a potential enhanced piece of equipment. We already have three in our possession. Getting one more won't hurt," he smiled greedily while imagining himself using yet another equipment that had a special effect.

Speaking of enhanced equipment reminded Graham of something. He looked at the bracelet on his wrist and placed it closer to his hair. Valentine must have neglected to feed it despite feeling the cold touch on his wrist because he was still under the effect of the cane. Luckily, Graham's warm body negated the damage it was doing to his body.

"Here, eat my hair,"

The moment the bracelet made contact with Graham's hair, its mouth began opening right away and started chomping away on it. His hair had gotten shorter because of it. Luckily, its mouth wasn't on the underside of the bracelet; otherwise, the hair on his arm would have also gone away.

"For now, let's use divination to get ready. We can't wait until we meet Cadhla to upgrade the belt. We need to divine a trustworthy Transmuter in this city. After that, we also need to find the next target related to the mayor. Lastly, since that woman is using enhanced equipment to curse divination attempts, there must be a limit. Let's just keep doing divination on her until she runs out of her curse,"